EU is pushing India and Canada to sign free trade agreements that will hurt their generic drugs—and the outrage is global After months of prevarication, the European Union has stated publicly that the free trade agreement (FTA) it signs with India will include provisions for data exclusivity because “it is extremely important for research and innovation’’. That’s what European Union ambassador Daniele Smadja told journalists in Delhi on January 21. Smadja’s...

Regulation in India's microfinance sector aims to address feckless borrowing and reckless lending – but will the new restrictions entrench poverty, rather than end it? One of the many crushing burdens for India's poor bear is debt; unable to make ends meet, they turn to traditional moneylenders. They are willing to extend credit, but at unconscionably high rates – sometimes exceeding 80%, and keeping borrowers in lifelong penury. Popular cinema and...

If the Unique Identity project is such a good thing why is the man heading it unable to answer simple questions about it? Since the publication of his doorstopper of a book Imagining India in 2009, Nandan Nilekani has done a superb job of reinventing himself. The former head of software giant Infosys Technologies was overnight cast in the role of a visionary with his unabashedly free market prescription to turn...

The late Rajiv Gandhi famously, or infamously, once claimed that only 15 per cent of the funds allocated to welfare programmes ever reached the intended beneficiaries. The rest leaked enroute, entering the pockets of an assortment of intermediaries. This is a thought that the Union finance minister must always remember, especially when he sits down to allocate funds for an assortment of subsidies and some of the high-profile spending programme...

Rules out blanket ban on or approval of such studies ‘HPV vaccination should supplement cervical cancer screening programme' The three-member committee, set up to probe the alleged irregularities in conducting studies using human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine by PATH in India, has identified several deficiencies in the planning and implementation of the project leading “to a crisis requiring suspension of the study,” but has fallen short of fixing responsibility on any individual or...